This is Good Taste, a menu for eating thoughtfully in the Bay Area. This week, we’re inspired by the power of Square Pie Guys’ simple charitable business model for pizza collaborations.
A former pop-up that went permanent in 2019 by opening in San Francisco’s SoMa District (1077 Mission Street), Square Pie Guys has since added locations in Ghirardelli Square (845 Beach Street) and Oakland (499 Dr. Huey P. Newton Way) and has contracted a dozen licensed ghost kitchens to serve other Bay Area cities. Between the noticeable influence of their thick and crispy Detroit-style pizzas as well as a new West Coast appreciation for the square Sicilian grandma slice, menus all over the Bay Area look a lot squarer than they once did before their arrival.
But what’s most impressive over here was to learn that Square Pie Guys has donated over $100,000 to various local causes through proceeds earned from the sale of limited edition collaborative pizzas since 2021. At first, three percent of the proceeds were donated to the nonprofit. That has since increased to five percent, which hopefully shows other food businesses that this can be a scalable and worthwhile endeavor even in challenging times. (Mission Chinese Food also comes to mind; the restaurant donates 75 cents from each dish to San Francisco-Marin Food Bank.)
Since the beginning, Square Pie Guys has kindly invited me into their San Francisco locations to try both secret and official menu items (please bring back the cheeseburger salad and the collaborative pies with Diaspora Co. and KMEL’s Shay Diddy!) and experiments (Taleggio cheese sticks with hot honey!). Today, I thank them for sending me their favorite OG collaboration that they’ve brought back for the summer in honor of the five-year anniversary so I could taste and take pics: Samin’s Summer Pie, with chef, food writer, and Salt Fat Acid Heat star Samin Nosrat. Five percent of the proceeds go to Oakland International High School, which is a few blocks from her house.
“It’s a school specifically for recent immigrants and refugees from all over the world,” Nosrat explained in an Instagram post with co-founder and CEO Marc Schechter. “They have such incredible support for these students and it just feels so good to know that this is happening in my own neighborhood. And it felt like I should start making choices to make the world better in a place where I can see it.”
[Photo: Samin’s Summer Pie at Square Pie Guys]
Samin’s Summer Pie hits the salt, fat, acid, and heat notes with white sauce, spicy cherry tomato salad, and sun-dried tomato vinaigrette drizzle. It tastes like tomato season in the Bay Area, when farmers markets are overflowing with cherry pints and Frankenstein-esque heirlooms.
“I like crunchy things. Like, the freako crust, it’s so good!” she said, when Schechter asked why she likes Detroit-style pies. “I haven’t historically loved a super deep dish, but there’s just something almost like focaccia-adjacent and I love focaccia so much. And I love that chewy dough and the way you guys do the toppings so every bite is a good bite.”
The other summer return is their first pizza collab from 2021, The JLIN, with pro basketball player Jeremy Lin benefitting his namesake foundation, which serves low-income AAPI youth. It comes with white sauce, precisely 36 pepperonis, chile flakes, green goddess, parsley, and grated grana cheese. When I went into the then-new Ghirardelli Square location to try it back in 2022, the whole restaurant was abuzz because Danny Glover happened to be walking by outside. He stopped and took pictures with everyone who wanted one. Perhaps he should be the next pizza guest star?
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